The present invention relates to radiation imaging apparatus and more particularly to radiation imaging apparatus involving a scintillation body having a rectangular cross-section with scintillation sensing units disposed along the body.
Positron emission tomography (PET) brain imaging systems are used in nuclear medicine diagnostic procedures for providing images of the brain. The cost of a PET system is very high and its use in clinical studies is limited to a few institutions which can afford one. An alternative to the PET systems is the single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) imaging system. The SPECT system includes a scintillation camera for detecting gamma rays emitted from a patient who has been administered a radiopharmaceutical. The SPECT system converts the detected gamma rays to tomographic images of the particular organ or region of the patient's body being analyzed. Although the SPECT system produces tomographic images which contain interpretable perfusion data, the low sensitivity, prolonged data acquisition times, poor resolution, and inability to perform absolute quantitation from the data makes the resulting studies less valuable than comparable PET studies. In order to overcome these deficiencies several systems have been designed and produced to improve SPECT brain imaging. Some of these systems are the Medimatic Tomomatic 564 manufactured by Medimatic Division of M.I.D., Inc., Irvine, Calif. and the Multi-X 810 manufactured by Strichman Medical Equipment Inc., Medfield, Mass. However, these systems can cost two to four times the cost of a SPECT imaging system which limits the number of institutions which can purchase one.
Another system which has been designed and produced to improve SPECT brain imaging is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,755,680 incorporated by reference. In this patent a radiation imaging apparatus includes a scintillation crystal which is a substantially tubular body of material such as crystalline sodium iodide. Manufacturing a tubular scintillator adds to the cost of the system as compared to using flat scintillators which are readily available.